required!” Felix insisted.
Meanwhile, Melanie had conflicting emotions: appreciation of her fiancé’s concern, loathing of his assumption that he, Felix, or both, were better prepared to photograph death than was she, a woman. It was a streak of male chauvinism she’d recognized in him before; not appreciated.
“It’s a matter of depth perception, clarity of focus, perspective,” Melanie reminded. “There are certain learned techniques of photography that make me the obvious best choice. For instance, consider the scratch marks on the victim.”
“What about the scratch marks?” Teddy asked.
“Has anyone else, here, realized that something like, say, a tube of lipstick, laid out beside them, can help immeasurably in later determining how long and wide the marks are, or, more importantly, how far apart they are, for comparisons, should the jaguar claim another victim?”
“I never realized you were such a forensics expert,” Teddy said and didn’t sound all that impressed with his discovery.
* * * *
“How much farther?” Charles complained.
Teddy’s answer: “Closer than Melanie or you should find yourselves wishing.”
Melanie was no longer even vaguely flattered by Teddy’s protective attitude. She found it condescending. When was the last time, not counting this one, that he had seen a jaguar-ravaged body? Had he been made dysfunctional by the experience?
Actually, he had looked in quite a state when he’d stumbled into camp; that memory made her less critical.
As predicted, the scene wasn’t pretty. Melanie got ill before, during, and after photographing it; she wasn’t alone if green faces and gagging reflexes were any indication. It was only her inherent need to do the job right that provided the impetus she needed to see her through it.
“How many pictures did you take?” Carolyne held Melanie’s head while the young women dry-heaved for not the first time.
“A twelve-picture digital chip’s worth.” Melanie accepted another wet-wipe and wondered how Carolyne kept producing them from a seemingly endless supply. The taste in her mouth wasn’t to be believed; Carolyne offered a breath mint.
“Wouldn’t you agree that’s enough?”
Melanie nodded.
When they rejoined the men, it wasn’t Melanie’s photographs any longer in question.
“Unbelievable!” Teddy didn’t look happy. He slapped his hat against his right thigh; no dust resulted, but there was a spray of dampness and perspiration. “I tell you, I heard and saw the animal.”
“No one denies the animal,” Roy argued. “It’s the time sequence suddenly in question.”
This perked Melanie’s ears, even before her uncle’s follow-up, “It just pulls Felix’s bonk on the head, and the radio’s destruction, in out of left field.”
“What does?” Carolyne asked.
“Roy here.…” Teddy’s hat-holding hand irritatingly swung in the prospector’s direction. “…says we’ve a murder.”
“Murder?” Melanie and Carolyne harmonized; Melanie, already weak, accepted Carolyne’s offer of momentary physical support.
“Something about rocks in the head,” Charles added cryptically. He corrected: “Rather, rock on the head.”
“This rock in particular.” Roy knelt on one knee and turned back the upper edge of the blanket they’d used to cover the body. Most of the dead man’s face remained blessedly concealed.
“On which Gordon hit his head when the jaguar took him down?” Carolyne interpreted.
“Wrong sequence of events,” Charles corrected but left Roy to provide specifics.
“No way would that rock be there for his head to hit, if left to Mother Nature.”
“I don’t understand,” Melanie confessed.
Once again, Carolyne was quicker on the uptake. “It’s river rock.”
“So agrees our visiting geologist,” Charles confirmed.
“Just over there is the river,” Melanie pointed in that direction.
“And there the river has been for a very long time, geologically speaking,” Roy explained. “But, dig down to bedrock, anywhere on this side of the river, and you’ll not find another stone like this one, here. It’s water-smooth and round.”
“Rivers flood,” Teddy reminded. “Stones in those rivers bang together and get smooth.”
“Indeed,” Roy agreed. “However, indicative geology says this river always floods eastward. It’s a matter of a steep western gradient formed by an intrusion of igneous rock along an ancient fault line.”
“All you grad students understand?” Charles was delighted by his comprehension. “We’re right back to passion as a motivation for murder.”
“You’re back to saying I killed him, you silly old fool?” Teddy challenged.
“Self-defense is an acceptable motive for murder,” Charles reminded. “Maybe, that rock was meant for your head before you wrestled it away from him.”
“Assisted by a conveniently handy hungry jaguar? Take my word: had I wanted Gordon dead, I would have shot him and dumped his body where no on would ever find it.”
“Stop, you two!” Carolyne insisted.
She turned back to Roy who seemed the only man present with his full wits about him. “Let me see if I’ve this geology stuff straight.”
He obliged by reiterating in layman terms. “The river flows along a fault line with harder rock on this side than on the other. The softer, more easily eroded, soil has always seen the water flood in its direction. No matter the volume, the water wouldn’t naturally have put that river rock, here, where it presently is. To have it here, someone would have had to go to the river and get it.”
“There’s always the possibility someone, for some other reason than murder, toted that rock here,” Carolyne pointed out. “There was once a substantial Indian population in residence, correct?”
Melanie confirmed, in that her father’s journals had mentioned as much. “Likewise, prospectors, geologists, anthropologists, zoologists, lepidopterists, botanists, and who knows who else tramp, tramp, tramping through.”
“The world is full of weirder coincidences than a man attacked by a jaguar and gone down to hit his head on a rock brought in by natives to sharpen spear points.” Carolyne decided that was a more comfortable alternative than murder.
Teddy turned on Charles. “If you don’t buy that, you old fool, how about you as the killer?”
“I?” Apparently, Charles found that notion so ludicrous that it bore repeating.
